


i won’t fall (unless you ask me to)

by legdabs (scvlly)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, eh, it's soft in places i hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 12:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14716217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scvlly/pseuds/legdabs
Summary: in 2009, it feels like nothing can last forever. but it could.





	i won’t fall (unless you ask me to)

**Author's Note:**

> last week, i met dnp and a few angels in edinburgh. we all got sad when we had to leave, and each wrote some 2009 angst on the train home. this is mine; [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14716013) is ellen’s; [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14715563) is sarah’s. enjoy :)

 

The walk to the train station from Phil’s car feels like one of the longest journeys of Dan’s life. 

They don’t speak, because neither of them have the words. They’d said enough this morning when they woke in each other’s arms, when Dan had let himself be carried away by the soft, slow drag of Phil’s mouth against his; when Dan had crawled down Phil’s body and taken his sweet time with him, and the older boy had returned the favour in a way that made Dan’s head spin. 

“It should always be like this for us,” Phil had said, bare-chested and rosey, his fingers pulling gently at the sweat-curled strands of Dan’s hair. “Is it too much to want to always wake up with you?”

Dan had swallowed hard. _It’s not too much_ , he’d wanted to say, _it’s not too much and I want it, too -_ except he couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat, and had to settle for rolling himself even tighter against Phil’s side and kissing him soundly.  He’d felt the tears even then, how they fell away from his eyes despite his best efforts to stop them, but then Phil’s hands had been there, cupping his face, and stroking the dampness away with the pad of his thumb. Against his lips were murmured quiet and soothing words and Dan had felt his heart swell with warmth and an overwhelming need to never leave this bed, this moment, this man. 

 

* * *

 

Phil buys him a coffee just before they get there; a caramel macchiato from the Starbucks a little way from the station that tastes like the warmth and sweetness that has filled Dan’s every waking moment for the last three days. Dan offers Phil a sip, and he takes one before they’ve even left the cafe because, as Dan now knows, the inside of his mouth is made of steel and boiling water is nothing but a challenge to Phil Lester.

“It’s a good one,” Phil tells him, and Dan can’t help but roll his eyes. 

“How do you have the tastebuds left to be able to tell?” he teases. 

“Have I been wrong about anything, ever?” Phil raises an eyebrow. 

Dan wishes they weren’t in public so he could kiss the infuriating smirk off his face.

 

* * *

 

They're a little early to the station, but that's okay. Phil had been adamant that he didn't want them to rush their last few hours together, and for that, Dan's grateful. They wait beneath the departure board, standing close enough that the waterproof material of their jackets rustles as their shoulders brush, but not so close that it could be construed as anything more.

"You're sure you've got everything?" Phil asks quietly.

Dan shrugs, answering only half-jokingly: "If I say no and we go back and I miss this train, can I stay another night?”

Phil leans into him a little more, and Dan feels the warmth of the contact even through the layers between them.

"I wish you could," he says.

"So do I."

 

* * *

 

The train is due to leave at 16.27, so his ticket tells him. 

Dan thinks it's bullshit, the odd timing, but everything else about this train station is bullshit, too. The fact that existed to bring them together, only to facilitate their being torn apart again. _Why can't it leave at exactly half past?_ He’d use those extra three minutes. He deserves them, he thinks. It'd be the least the universe could give him, after the poor hand he's been dealt in life so far. 

An extra three minutes - or even better, an extra three days.

He realises he won't get his wish when the platform number is finally displayed beside the destination, with just fifteen minutes to go.

"Come on," Phil says gently, picking up Dan's bag. He encourages him forward towards platform five with a guiding hand that rests against the small of his back, and for the first time, Dan finds he really doesn't care what people think of the gesture. 

 

* * *

Thirteen minutes.

It's a little too real now, to watch the seconds counting down on the big clock behind them, to feel the passage of time like a physical blow to the gut. 

Phil's standing close by, close enough that Dan could reach out and touch him, if he wanted. He could cup his jaw, or reach for the open zipper of his jacket; anything pull him even closer, to feel their bodies align once more.

He doesn't. He's not that brave. Not in a busy station, where it only takes one pair of the wrong eyes and a few sharp words, or worse, to bring his world tumbling down. _One day, though,_ he thinks; hopeful, for the first time, about where this road might lead. He could be brave for Phil, he's sure. He wants to be.

_One day._

 

* * *

Nine minutes.

Standing here, Dan realises that these eyes, Phil’s, are the ones he wants to look into forever. He wants to sit across him and stare into them to feel their warmth for endless and lazy days; wants to wake up beside Phil to see those eyes already watching him, just inches from his own.   

Dan wants to see their every colour, the way they look in every light. He's made a start this week, cataloguing how they look from across the table in Starbucks - a warm blue, with a hint more yellow than usually visible; in the kitchen at night as he boils up water for the pasta they were too busy to eat earlier - a pale, almost grey-blue. His favourite is the way they look from across the pillow in the morning, backlit and warmed by the earliest rays of sun in a soft shade of green. 

Right now, Phil’s eyes are a watery grey. Dan still thinks they’re the prettiest eyes he’s ever seen.

 

* * *

 

Their conversation by now is quiet and effectively meaningless, but Dan doesn’t want it to stop. Phil’s voice could be saying anything so long as he can hear it, soft and low and clear beside him. He doesn’t want the words to be meaningful just yet, because a change in tone means a seriousness he’s not ready to face. It means he’s closer to having to say goodbye.

It happens, though. Of course it does. Phil turns in so that their bodies are a little closer, and when their eyes meet, his are soft, apologetic. 

It’s time.

“I’ll see you soon, yeah?” Dan says. He hears the way his own voice cracks, but he can’t stop it. He can’t even try to. He knows there’s nothing he can do to make this hurt any less than it already does. 

“So soon,” Phil promises. “You’ll see me so much you’ll be sick of it.”

Phil’s only teasing, Dan’s sure, but he can’t chance letting the thought that Dan could ever grow tired of him linger in his mind.

“You know I’ll never get enough of you, right?” He says in earnest, and Phil gives him a gentle smile that says _I know._ The way his eyes flicker away to travel up and down Dan’s body, lingering on his collar and full bottom lip, says Phil feels the same way.

Phil steps a little closer so that there’s just centimetres between them, reaches for Dan’s hand, and squeezes it. 

“You should get on the train,” he says quietly. Dan nods reluctantly, a movement so small it’s barely noticeable. 

It’s too much to speak - Dan doesn’t have the words, and he’s not sure he really even expects to find them when his tongue feels so dry, and every step away from Phil looks like a mountain to climb. He does what he can, though, which is to squeeze back against Phil’s hand a little too tightly, and take one last look into the shifting hues of his eyes. They’re a greeny-blue in the harsh light of the station, and Dan’s not sure if he’ll ever get used to their beauty; the beauty of the whole man whose hand is still in his, with whom spending three days is not enough.

With a final shaky smile, he lets go, and heads towards the train, but almost immediately he hears a familiar voice calling his name, and feels fingers grasping at the sleeve of his jacket. It’s Phil, of course, and he spins Dan away from the train; tugging him back from the platform edge through the few people hurrying that way and this, and stopping him beside the station wall.

“Wha-” Dan starts to ask, but he’s cut off by the way Phil pulls their bodies close, hands spanned against the small of his back, and presses their lips together. It’s a surprise and it’s a lot but it’s not enough, _never_ enough, and Dan chases the brush of Phil’s tongue with his own eagerly as the noise of the platform fades from his mind. He finds he doesn’t care who sees or what they think, because this is good, it’s real, and it’s his. Nothing else matters. 

Phil’s plaid shirt is bunched in Dan’s hands as he holds him close, unwilling to let go for even a second. For as long as Phil’s mouth is against his and his hands are wrapped around his back, Dan doesn’t have to leave. There is no train to catch, no home to go back to: in this perfect moment, the world doesn’t exist outside of the way it feels to kiss Phil.

The paradise can’t last, he knows, but disappointment still stings deep in his chest when Phil pulls away a little, breathing heavily against his lips. 

“That was the last call to board,” he murmurs. Dan wonders how Phil had had the presence of mind to be aware of what’s around them, to hear anything at all, when just a few seconds ago, lost in the push and pull of their mouths, he’s not sure he’d known so much as his own name.

Phil angles his head a little so that their foreheads rest together. Their skin is separated by the fall of their long fringes but the contact feels no less intimate, no less right. It feels even more right when Phil’s hands travel up to cup the sides of Dan’s face with the gentlest touch, thumbing across his cheekbones until Dan closes his heavy eyes. 

“I don’t wanna go,” he says weakly, and Phil takes a deep breath before kissing the end of his nose.

“I don’t want you to either. But you have to.”

Dan nods.

“I’ll see you soon.” Phil promises him one more time. Dan still knows he means it. 

“Kiss me again?” he asks, and maybe it’s a little pleadingly, but Phil doesn’t say a word - he just leans a little closer, and lets their lips brush once more. It’s chaste and a lingering second from bittersweet, but somehow it’s enough to know that someday, they won’t have to say goodbye like this. There will be no last kiss, no last embrace, no train to take them a hundred and fifty miles further apart than they should ever have to be. Dan’s willing to wait for that someday. He thinks it might be the only reason he manages to walk away from Phil on the platform, and finally get on the damn train.

 

* * *

 

Dan’s ready to cry as soon as he finds his seat - number thirty-one, beside the window, facing out towards the platform. He sees Phil straight away. He observes him scanning the windows and looking for Dan, to see him one last time. When he finally spots him, he steps closer to the train and gives him a weak smile; one that Dan can barely find the strength to return. 

The guard whistles. Phil has to move back a little, but Dan doesn’t miss his mouth twitching into a frown, and the redness that grows around his eyes. He finds himself biting his own bottom lip, but his eyes grow damp regardless. He wishes they wouldn’t, because it blurs the sight of Phil on the platform; the only thing he wants to clearly see. He wishes he could stay strong in front of Phil, but something tells him Phil won’t mind. It doesn’t matter anyway. The tug in his heart he feels as the train lurches into motion is too real to repress. 

He watches Phil lift one hand to his mouth and bite into a knuckle, waving at him weakly with the other. Dan wiggles his fingers in a poor imitation of the movement, but it’s all he can manage. The first tear falls - he feels it make its way from the inner corner of his eye, and down across his cheek - and he just can’t hold it together any more. 

Phil keeps pace beside the train for a few steps, but that’s all it is. There’s no dramatic, romantic movie-esque run alongside it, but that’s hardly what either of them want. The train speeds up and Phil stops, hand still mid-wave, taking deep, shuddering breaths that seem to travel through his whole body. 

As the train pulls further away, Dan thinks he sees Phil’s lips move behind his knuckles, but he can’t quite see the shapes his mouth makes, and he certainly can’t hear the words. 

It doesn’t matter. 

He feels them. 

He knows.

 

* * *

 

As the lights of the station fade away outside of the window, Dan manages to get himself a little more under control. He tells himself it’s only temporary, this feeling of loss, and he can believe it because it’s true. Soon they’ll be together again, even if it’s just for a few short days - but the nagging voice in the back of his mind is insistent. _When?,_ it asks, over and over, but it’s a question he can’t answer. Dan realises that what hurts the most isn’t the present finality of leaving Phil behind, but the uncertainty of when they’ll meet again. 

He’s okay, until he finds he’s not. The ache Dan feels in the back of his throat from stifling his tears grows, grows to the point where he finds it’s very nearly too much to keep holding himself together. So he just decides to let himself cry. The tears fall silently and he brings his knees up to his chest, hugging them close and burying his face between them. He wonders how he must look, a lanky teenager dressed all in black and draped in the shadows of the carriage, with puffy red eyes that stare blankly ahead.

He wants to hide, so he pulls up the collar of his jumper - _Phil’s_ jumper, the one he’d stolen from his bedroom floor as Phil had watched with the gentlest of smiles - until it covers his nose and mouth. He breathes deeply, partly to calm himself, but mostly to inhale the feeling of Phil all around him again. It smells like being wrapped in Phil’s warm arms; like the woodsy cologne Dan had first been struck by when Phil had held him at the train station; like coffee, faintly, with a hint of Phil’s shower gel. 

He knows it’ll be all he wears until he sees him, that he’ll sulk around the house and crawl into bed in the closest thing he has to Phil until his scent fades and all that’s left are the memories of how it had felt to be wanted, to be loved. He’ll wear it until he feels that again; not just over Skype or through a daily stream of texts, but until he can feel Phil beneath him, and feel his heart beating in time with his own.

He wants the train to break down. He wants for it to change direction and take him back to the only place he’s ever felt he never wanted to leave. He’d run from here, he knows, to cover the miles that already stretch between himself and Phil, no matter how much his legs ached or how long it took. 

It won’t, of course. The train rumbles on loudly beneath him, reminding him of its tenacity and invulnerability, of its determination to plough on. He’s stuck with the remnants of the mostly-set sun casting a little unwanted warmth against his cheek as the endless brown fields pass by. His vision is unfocused, blurry from disinterest and the tears that threaten and intermittently fall. 

He hates this. He hates that there’s a quiet beauty in this landscape that doesn’t chime with the emptiness he feels in his stomach; the seemingly endless longing he feels to go back to Manchester, to Phil, where everything he’s ever wanted was made real. He hates that he can’t just catch the next train back again and stay there forever, because he’s already so sure that there’s nowhere he’d rather spend the rest of his life than beside Phil. He hates that he can’t, can’t, _can’t._ He wants not to feel so powerless. He wants _more._

Dan feels his phone buzz, and forces himself to unfurl his legs to reach into his pocket. It’s probably just his mum, asking if he’s on his way and how his trip has been, but he hardly feels ready to speak to anyone at all - never mind to talk about the boy he’s had to leave behind. In the final moments before the sun’s light fades for the night, he finds his phone, and picks it up with a still-shaky hand. 

It’s not his mum.

 

phil: _hope the train isnt too bad. i just drove home. i miss u :(_

 

Despite himself, Dan smiles at the screen.

 

dan: _we’re 2 stops in but it feels like ive been on here forever. i miss u too :(_

phil _: wheres next?_

dan _: stoke on trent_

phil _: ugly name_

dan _: probably an ugly place. i cant tell tho bcos the sun’s mostly set n it’s dark_

phil _: probably for the best_

dan _: probably_

phil _: :)_

phil _: do u want to keep talking 2me til ur home?_

dan _: is that ok?_

phil _: ofc :)_

dan _: thank u :p_

 

Their conversation seems to have come to a natural close, and Dan feels disappointment deep in his gut. After a few moments, though, Phil’s next message arrives.

 

phil _: are u up to anything in 3 weekends time?_

dan _: not sure without the calendar, y?_

phil _: im off work for 3 days. thought i could pop n see u_

 

Dan feels his heart flutter, and tries to pretend his mouth isn’t stretching into a shit-eating grin. 

Three weeks. He can do three weeks.

 

dan _: !!!!!_

dan _: ill have to check w mum but im free whenever u r :p_

phil _: eee so exciting i hope we’re allowed xD_

dan _: me too ahh_

phil _: if i cant come to urs we can try 2 organise something else yh?_

dan _: please. im gonna need to see u by then_

phil _: i already need to see u again_

dan _: me 2 lol didnt wanna sound too clingy too soon_

phil _: i guess we’re past that stage already huh_

dan _: sounds like it ;)_

phil _: where r u now_

dan _: leamington_

phil _: posh_

dan _: oxford soon. even posher_

phil _: damn. u think we’ll be able to afford posh someday?_

 

_We. Someday._ Just like that, with two simple words, it feels like Phil’s ripped the ground out from beneath him, pulled the air from his lungs. The casual mention of a future with the two of them, together, feels like too much, because it’s more than he’d dared to hope for in his wildest imaginings of _where Dan and Phil will go from here._ He doesn’t understand how Phil can so casually allude to that, without fear of Dan’s reaction, of the presence of reciprocal feelings. It’s just a fact that he thinks about that - wants it, even, like so many things other things just simply _are_ with Phil. Having money, in the future, together. It’s straightforward, in a way. 

Dan thinks fifty quid for food and Phil’s arms around him would be enough, never mind a sprawling townhouse in Oxford or Leamington, or even a tiny flat in Manchester. He’d never say as much, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

 

dan: _imagine if we could_

phil _: where would u wanna live?_

dan _: idek_

dan _: london, maybe. try out a real city_

phil _: london scares me lol_

dan _: manchester, then. it’s not worth it if ur scared_

phil _: id do it for u_

dan _: i wouldnt want u to_

phil _: :) ur good to me_

dan _: i know. ur alright to me too tho_

phil _: hey dan_

dan _: hey phil_

phil _: where r u_

dan _: idk actually_

dan _: wait. sign on the train says reading’s the next stop_

dan _: wtf that went fast_

phil _: ikr. u feel ok now?_

dan _: ill b more than fine if im seeing u in 3 weeks_

phil _: u gotta let me know, yea? when u know if i can come? if not we’ll do sth else i promise_

dan _: sounds perf_

phil _: i’ll let u go now. stay safe k? text me when ur home so i know_

dan _: are u free? can i skype u when im back?_

phil _: i’d rly like that_

phil _: i miss ur face already. how’s that possible_

dan _: idk but i feel the same_

dan _: hurry up on that manchester apartment yeah?_

phil _: i’ll do my best ;)_

phil: _i hope ur ready to move in at 0 notice_

dan: _do u even need to ask_

phil _: i guess not :p_

phil _: skype as soon as ur home?_

dan _: sounds good. ill see u soon :-)_

 

_Soon._ Skype isn’t the same as being with Phil in person, not by a long stretch - but it’s seeing Phil’s face and hearing his voice within a meaningful time frame, and it’s good enough for now. 

The train slows, and Dan sets his phone aside to gather his things and run a hand over his face. He finds there’s no lingering dampness from the tears from earlier, and deep down, he really does feel a lot more okay. 

He checks his phone one more time as he gets to his feet, and sees a message he’d missed.

 

phil _: <3_

 

Dan grins, and sends the same message straight back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> legdabs on tumblr!
> 
> title from phoebe bridgers' 'steamroller'


End file.
